So Long, America

Here is Judge Napolitano's closing argument Thursday on his FreedomWatch.

Does the government work for us or do we work for the government? Tonight, wars and rumors of war.

The United States was forged in a war: The American revolution. After the rebels defeated the King, we were blessed with something unique in history; a founding document, the Constitution, which was not imposed upon the people but rather was ratified by them, and which set out to establish strict limits on the federal government. The whole purpose of the Constitution was to keep the government off the people's backs; to assure that the new government here would never be as destructive of freedom and property as the King had been; to guarantee that the government is the servant and the people were the master; still a revolutionary idea even today, more than 230 years later.

So what happened to the war machine that freed the American colonies of their British masters? It was subsumed by the new government. The same generation that fought an American revolution whose unifying principles were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, ran a government that violated those very principles. In the Whiskey Rebellion, President George Washington shot and arrested farmers who refused to pay a federal tax on booze they made at home; and under the Alien and Sedition Acts, President John Adams prosecuted people for criticizing him.

More